Does Your Congregation Have A Clear Sense Of Purpose?

In one of his books, Charles Paul Conn recalls the beginning to an unusual phone call. Conn had seen a Yellow Pages listing for a restaurant in Atlanta called Church of God Grill.

Curious about the odd name, he dialed the number and got the owner. “Hello,” said a cheery voice on the phone, “Church of God Grill.” Conn asked how the diner had been given such an unusual name.
Well,” the man began, “We started a little church down here, and we started selling chicken dinners after church on Sunday to help pay the bills. People liked the chicken, and we did such a good business, that eventually we cut back on the church service. After a while we just closed down the church altogether and kept on serving the chicken dinners. We kept the name we started with, and that’s Church of God Grill” (source)
What’s the moral of the above story? Congregations that do not have a clear sense of purpose, simply drift toward pleasing the greatest number of people.

Dear reader, as members of the Lord’s church, let us continue to be "the pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15), and continue to uphold, defend, and proclaim God’s truth (John 17:17) that souls might be saved (1 Peter 1:6-9).

Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets

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